Biography

My name is Flor de Maria Notchebuena Santander, I was born in Mexico, in the city of Oujutla, in the state of Indalco. In Mexico City I studied International Relations. When I finished my internship, I came to Greece as a Greek Government Scholar. I took my first Greek language courses in Thessaloniki, at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Then, I finished my studies at the Higher School of Tourism Professions in Rhodes. I worked in the tourism sector, but my love for languages, especially for Greek and Spanish, led me to the Greek Open University where in 2008 I finished my studies in Spanish Language and Culture and taught Spanish.

In 2008 I was certified by the Instituto Cervantes of Spain as an oral proficiency examiner for Spanish language degrees, and by the Ministry of Education of the Hellenic State as an oral proficiency examiner for State Certificates of Language Proficiency of all levels. This year, 2024, I renewed my certification as an oral language examiner by the Instituto Cervantes in Spanish language degrees at all levels.  

In 2019 I finished my Master's degree in "Language and Cultural Sciences", direction "Translation, Communication and Publishing" at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. My Master's thesis is entitled: "Amor e Inmediatez", an annotated translation of the first poetry collection of the Greek writer and poet Dinos Christianopoulos, Age of the Mighty Cows.                                          

I participate every year in training seminars for teachers of Spanish as a foreign language. Spanish is my mother tongue, I speak Greek, English and a little French. I find that both learning a foreign language and teaching one's mother tongue is a challenge, but at the same time, an endless journey into the soul of the other and into the soul of oneself.    

Courses